Soft Skills Integration into Business Processes Based on the Requirements of Employers—Approach for Sustainable Education

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of increasing the quality and sustainability of education at universities regarding the requirements of employers. Employers’ expectations of university graduates in terms of soft skills are analysed and outlined. The employers participating in this study answered a questionnaire survey focused on understanding university graduates’ soft skills. The collected results were subjected to the method of mathematical–statistical analysis by nonparametric testing of significance of the mean value difference. The significance of the difference for individual skills was confirmed, demonstrating that the surveyed enterprises required and anticipated a level of soft skills development on the part of recent graduates that was insufficient. This finding implies the necessity of improving university education to match the expected and real state of soft skill mastery.

How COVID-19 Pandemic affects Software Developers’ Wellbeing, and the Necessity to strengthen Soft Skills

“…The set of soft skills . As we mentioned early, the WEF suggested a set of skills needed for the fourth industrial revolution [ 1 , 50 ], as it is shown in Table 1 . We adapted such proposal to the software development context considering intra and interpersonal attributes.…”

“…Employers know that professional and technical skills alone cannot help to achieve organizational goals and maintain company competitiveness. The qualities preferred for software developers include technical knowledge within the field or the position as well as soft skills [ 50 ]. Currently, employers consider that to achieve the company’s goals, the employees must master the technical and professional knowledge and superstructure of soft skills.…”

“…A hard skill is the ability to conduct a particular type of task or activity using technical knowledge and experience, while a soft skill relates to a person’s relationships with others and can be applied widely [ 50 ]. Hard skills involve technical knowledge of programming languages, compilers, base software systems [ 51 – 56 ], and other specific technical knowledge such as effort estimation, and so on [ 57 ].…”

“…Soft skills are personal qualities, attributes, or the level of commitment of a person setting him or her apart from other individuals who may have similar skills and experience [ 62 ]. They are the intangible, non-technical, personality-specific skills that characterize a person as a leader, facilitator, mediator, and negotiator [ 50 ].…”

“…The report compares the shift in the soft skills needed to succeed in maintaining a job. In Table 1 we can see how the top ten skills have shifted between 2015 and 2020 [ 1 , 50 ].…”